Annual Ryegrass

Annual Ryegrass thrives throughout most of North America and is known for its rapid germination. For this reason, this grassy weed is often used as a nurse crop or temporary turf grass to quickly fill in bare areas. Annual Ryegrass is sometimes also used to overseed Southern turf grasses in the winter to provide green grass all year-round. It is typically found growing in moist to wet soils with reasonably good drainage. These grassy weeds are also winter annuals, meaning they overlap two calendar years but last only 12 months total. They germinate and develop from late summer to early fall, remain semidormant during the winter and then flower in spring. Come late spring or early summer, they mature and die off as the weather warms.